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Just after midnight on August 31, Mitchell Wallace was awakened from his home in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite by the sound of gunshots. He heard dozens of rounds being fired and emerged from his house in time to see a police dog bite 25-year-old Michael Vincent Allen in the neck and drag him from his truck. Allen had just led police on a high-speed car chase, and would die from his wounds.

The Dallas Morning Newsreports (hat tip to Carlos Miller) that after the shooting subsided, Wallace took out his cell phone and began taking photos and videos of the carnage. But the police evidently didn't appreciate the scrutiny. Wallace says the Mesquite police confiscated the phone, deleted the photos and videos, and didn't return the device for four days.

That's a shame, because there are significant unanswered questions about the incident. The police say that officer Patrick Tuter fired his weapon 41 times. The department is conducting an investigation to determine whether the incident was handled properly. While Wallace didn't get video of the shootings themselves, his photos and videos could still have provided crucial evidence corroborating or refuting Tuter's account of the encounter.

Moreover, many observers believe that it's illegal for the police to confiscate a cell phone and delete photos and videos from it. Indeed, the Obama administration took that position earlier this year in a Baltimore case, arguing that the Baltimore police violated a man's First and Fourth Amendment rights when they confiscated his phone and deleted photos and video from it. He's now involved in a bitter lawsuit with the BPD. The police chief in Washington, DC, was forced to adopt an official policy prohibiting officers from interfering with amateur photography under pressure from an ACLU lawsuit, but that pressure has not yet extended to police forces around the country.

Of the opinion that its illegal? No, its illegal. Deletion is equivalent to Destruction of Property. The police have no authority to demand you hand over your coat and then they tear it to shreds in front of you. There is no authority for them to delete photos. They can confiscate (through probable cause or a warrant), but under no circumstances do they have any authority to delete anything.

There ARE means of undeleting the photos, right? Specialized programs that can go in and salvage deleted files from a media... provided the media hasn't been deliberately overwritten again with junk files and then those deleted, say.

There should be a law against the intentional destruction of evidence.

Some police officers consider a crime scene there's to manipulate until a detective gets there to officiate what is and isn't "evidence". Thus, you get officers "collecting evidence" or tampering with a scene or not following due process. Likewise, you get situations like this ... it's not "evidence" if you can get ahold of it before the detectives arrive.

Guy should feel lucky he even got his property back. Two friends of mine that were sharing a house with an idiot that met an underaged girl in a park one night. Cop found him and her, carded her...she turned out to be underaged. They jump to the conclusion that he's a sexual predator, child molester, and get a warrant out to search his house thinking he's running a child porn ring there. Cops show up to the surprise of one of my friends, he's treated like the worst criminal scum bag they've ever seen, they confiscate any computer-related stuff in the house, and tell him he better not leave town for the next few months if he knows what's good for him. Cops never found anything, and no charges were filed against the two friends (moron was put on a sexual predator list, though). However, they never got their stuff back.

Cops in DFW are known for treating you as guilty until proven innocent ... southern hospitality and all.

There is an app that allows the phone to take a video and send it to a secure server where it can be retrieved after it is deleted from the phone. The video would be much harder for the local police to delete without going through the court system.This information should be made widely available so that everyone could get it just in case of incidents such as this.

There ARE means of undeleting the photos, right? Specialized programs that can go in and salvage deleted files from a media... provided the media hasn't been deliberately overwritten again with junk files and then those deleted, say.

It's my understanding that this is extremely difficult to do with flash storage, both because it doesn't provide convenient 'ghosts' like magnetic storage and because of techniques which flash drives use to preserve the life of the media and improve performance.

Well, I do hope this results in some harsh actions taken against the police officers who do this sort of stuff... Perhaps if these officers were jailed for a long time, and then permanently barred from ever working in any kind of law enforcement capacity again.

I'm reading some variation on this story about police misconduct around the country with accompanying cover-up, or alleged cover-up, almost weekly. The police really need to do something serious to clean up their act. Their "protect and serve" image is becoming seriously tarnished I would say.

Sorry, this is the state where a guy ignored the police and shot dead two unarmed idiots. Then walked.

If you think anyone is going to take this guy's side then you have more faith in them than I...

There's a whole lot more to the story than that.

This guy has the same chance as anyone in the US of getting significant action. Which is to say not much, unfortunately.

I don't take important photos or videos with my camera, but given how often it seems this happens I'm setting up automatic uploading.

I already use my phone as a road cam; my last vehicle was totalled because someone ran a stop sign, but because it was my word versus theirs, I got the ticket. (They turned a corner, so the cop just saw it as a rear-end collision; I can't blame the officer, they have to act based on what they can see and witnesses, and no witnesses stopped.)

There ARE means of undeleting the photos, right? Specialized programs that can go in and salvage deleted files from a media... provided the media hasn't been deliberately overwritten again with junk files and then those deleted, say.

It's my understanding that this is extremely difficult to do with flash storage, both because it doesn't provide convenient 'ghosts' like magnetic storage and because of techniques which flash drives use to preserve the life of the media and improve performance.

My understanding is that assuming the flash media hasn't been filled with junk data, there's a good chance that the data still exists. Because the flash media's controller is trying to maximise the lifespan of the media, the "sectors" occupied by the minutes/hours-old evidence would (1) not actually be deleted, as that would require an overwrite and therefore cost the flash media a write cycle on that sector, and (2) wouldn't be first in line to be overwritten, because the media controller is trying to balance write cycles across all sectors.

Wow so the Police took a cell phone and deleted photos and video from it. Effectively destroying evidence to potentially cover their own wrong doing? And someone thought that was a smart thing to do? I sincerely hope the hammer gets dropped on that entire department if they don't punish those officers for what they did. I could see taking the phone to make sure the photos and video were entered as EVIDENCE but not to delete them. That's just asinine.

There is an app that allows the phone to take a video and send it to a secure server where it can be retrieved after it is deleted from the phone. The video would be much harder for the local police to delete without going through the court system.This information should be made widely available so that everyone could get it just in case of incidents such as this.

If I were a police officer, I would be watching my back. Sooner or later, the American people are going to say "enough is enough" and start taking their frustration on the cops who continue to violate our civil and constitutional rights.

If my rights were violated, would I retaliate against the police? Damned straight I would because not even the courts are willing to hold police officers responsible for their conduct either.

Take a look at the "sham of an investigation" that took place in Saginaw Michigan. It was no surprise that the investigation would take the side of the police. How the hell do you fire 46 bullets at one person. If you're a police officer, you don't act like you're in a video game. Shoot the suspect in the leg, or in the arm. But to keep shooting non-stop until you run out of bullets?

It's time that Americans started arming themselves and throw the legality of owning a weapon out of the window because not even the Obama Administration is doing anything about this abuse. We're turned into a country where the cops act like Nazi Gestapo and that internal investigators no longer hold them accountable.

Ever since 9/11, cops have turned into vigilante thugs and not the community safety officers that they are supposed to be. I don't pay my taxes just so police officers can violate my constitutional rights.

The cops can no longer be trusted to protect our safety and it's time that we remove them from our communities, our cities and our country.

If I were a police officer, I would be watching my back. Sooner or later, the American people are going to say "enough is enough" and start taking their frustration on the cops who continue to violate our civil and constitutional rights.

If my rights were violated, would I retaliate against the police? Damned straight I would because not even the courts are willing to hold police officers responsible for their conduct either.

Take a look at the "sham of an investigation" that took place in Saginaw Michigan. It was no surprise that the investigation would take the side of the police. How the hell do you fire 46 bullets at one person. If you're a police officer, you don't act like you're in a video game. Shoot the suspect in the leg, or in the arm. But to keep shooting non-stop until you run out of bullets?

It's time that Americans started arming themselves and throw the legality of owning a weapon out of the window because not even the Obama Administration is doing anything about this abuse. We're turned into a country where the cops act like Nazi Gestapo and that internal investigators no longer hold them accountable.

Ever since 9/11, cops have turned into vigilante thugs and not the community safety officers that they are supposed to be. I don't pay my taxes just so police officers can violate my constitutional rights.

The cops can no longer be trusted to protect our safety and it's time that we remove them from our communities, our cities and our country.

Totally agreed on everything. I have seen some good cops (two of my relatives are cops or were cops) but they are few and far between.

If I were a police officer, I would be watching my back. Sooner or later, the American people are going to say "enough is enough" and start taking their frustration on the cops who continue to violate our civil and constitutional rights.

If my rights were violated, would I retaliate against the police? Damned straight I would because not even the courts are willing to hold police officers responsible for their conduct either.

Take a look at the "sham of an investigation" that took place in Saginaw Michigan. It was no surprise that the investigation would take the side of the police. How the hell do you fire 46 bullets at one person. If you're a police officer, you don't act like you're in a video game. Shoot the suspect in the leg, or in the arm. But to keep shooting non-stop until you run out of bullets?

It's time that Americans started arming themselves and throw the legality of owning a weapon out of the window because not even the Obama Administration is doing anything about this abuse. We're turned into a country where the cops act like Nazi Gestapo and that internal investigators no longer hold them accountable.

Ever since 9/11, cops have turned into vigilante thugs and not the community safety officers that they are supposed to be. I don't pay my taxes just so police officers can violate my constitutional rights.

The cops can no longer be trusted to protect our safety and it's time that we remove them from our communities, our cities and our country.

A gun is a lethal weapon. You shoot to kill. You also shoot at the easiest target. The torso. Leg and arm shots are Hollywood and not real except in very limited circumstances. Police are also trained to fire until the threat is neutralized. You would be surprised how someone can still move and react after being shot. Police will very frequently empty their magazine. The Saginaw shooting involved 6 officers. Thats about 7-8 shots per officer. The number of bullets is not an issue. Was the shooting justified? That is the question. But the number of bullets is an appeal to emotion without examining the facts.

You are getting angry over situations you have very little understanding of. And you appear to be threatening to harm police officers while showing a clear lack of understanding. You are a dangerous individual.

Tell me about it. This country is going to shit and even those idiots up on the hill know it. The more that they pass laws to restrict our constitutional rights and the more that law enforcement continue to trample on our rights, they're going to end up starting a whole new civil war and it won't be like the civil war our ancestors fought.

I think what we're going to see is this country being put back into the hands of Americans to control their own destiny. Government in this country has become a failed experiment where the wealthy are protected by both parties in Congress, businesses, corporations and Wall Street create the bills that our representatives are supposed to be creating and Americans are considered nothing more than cattle that exist only to cast a vote to re-elect those morons.

Would I take up arms against my own country? If my neighbors, my family and my friends recognized that there was a problem, you are damned straight I would. I'm a patriot. I'm an American. But I won't stand by quietly while my country treats me like a second class citizen with no rights.

That's not what my ancestors fought for, that's not what my uncles fought for. I had an uncle who recently passed away, on my mother's side, who fought in the first world war World War. He was a decorated officer and I loved my uncle. To see this country that he fought for, disrespecting and stepping over my rights, that he fought for, is a level of disrespect that nobody should ever have to live with. He passed away very recently and I'm ashamed at the actions of those in Congress who continue to dishonor the freedoms that he fought on behalf of all of us.

See, he was my grandmother's brother, and they came to this country at the turn of the 20th century. They immigrated to the United States from Poland, before the first two world wars. She was a legal immigrant, and I'm simply ashamed to be referred to as an American because our leaders and those who are supposed to protect our safety, the cops, continue to walk all over the memory of my uncle.

Tell me about it. This country is going to shit and even those idiots up on the hill know it. The more that they pass laws to restrict our constitutional rights and the more that law enforcement continue to trample on our rights, they're going to end up starting a whole new civil war and it won't be like the civil war our ancestors fought.

(etc...)

You know everything you just wrote makes you a target for the FBI, DHS, NSA, etc, right?

Clearly this police behavior is outrageous and these offending police should be dealt with, and I agree that a policy against deleting photos and videos from citizens phones should be made clear.

However, I think the conclusion that "all police officers are evil" is very overblown and suffers from substantial selection bias: the number of articles documenting police deleting photos and videos far outweighs the number of articles about police who do their job properly, and I am certain that the number of police that any Ars commenter has dealt with is a very small sample size.

I have read about 3 - 4 Ars stories on this egregious behavior. Maybe more, maybe some involved multiple officers. So 3 - 4 stories with say 2 - 5 officers per story = 20 police deleting photos. Let's just aggressively assume that we only hear about 1% of these cases and gross it up to 2000 police engaged in cell phone photo destruction.

2000 / 461,000 = 0.4% (or less) of police officers who are out there deleting people's photos and videos. That's a very small number. And a pretty decent failure rate for a complex system. Keep in mind that to my estimate only 20 / 461,000 = 0.004% of these officers have actually been documented as deleting photos here on Ars.

The issue itself suffers from a huge selection bias: The only officers who are going to be recorded in the first place are the ones doing bad things. And if they are already doing bad things, they aren't going to think too hard about the ethical dilemma of deleting photos and videos from a cell phone.

So the percentage of police officers who have had photos and videos taken of them who then try to delete them is likely very high, but you cannot draw the conclusion from that that a high percentage of police officers would delete your photos and videos.

I bet that almost all police officers are never even in a situation where they would even be motivated to delete your photos and videos.

I know I have never photographed or recorded any police activity, but I have seen a lot of police engaged in law enforcement activity.

And of course - the lesson to anyone who does see offending police activity important enough to record on cell phone is that they best be smart enough to not be so obvious about recording it! What do you think a wrong-doing officer is going to do if he sees you? Its like a child playing in the street - she shouldn't get run over by a car by law but - why the hell is she playing in the street? A law isn't going to protect you from damage when the time comes!